Claire Booker lives in Brighton between the south downs and the sea. Her poems have been set to music, filmed, displayed on buses and published widely, including in Ambit, Magma, The Moth, Poetry News, Rialto, Stand and The Spectator. She was presented with a Kathak Literary Award in Bangladesh. Her pamphlets are The Bone That Sang (Indigo Dreams) and Later There Will Be Postcards (Green Bottle Press). Her website can be found at www.bookerplays.co.uk
At the bear sanctuary
old friendships are respected: Attila
is cohabiting with a wolf. Florentina waits
for Boris by the perimeter fence, happy
to crop grass under his blinded eye as he
eviscerates oranges (his favourite fruit)
or licks speciality ice cream made of
supermarket throw-outs. Maria has been
breaking hearts since she arrived – wears her
blunt claws and honey-fur apologetically,
treads the same small circle round the clock.
She once rode a unicycle in tight rings
inside a larger ring. One night in Bucureşti
she sat down bare-faced in the sawdust –
refused the crowd’s adulation. Fellow artiste,
Max, has turned solo; rotates on his huge
haunches and paw-claps groups if he
spots them by the fence. He’s under his own
management now, perfecting applause . . .
Claire Booker
